Switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) are power management components in modern electronic devices. They provide, among other things, efficient and galvanically isolated power to multiple loads. To achieve high power processing efficiency and/or galvanic isolation, conventionally one or more magnetically coupled elements, semiconductor switches and associated gate driver circuits are required.
The magnetically coupled elements often suffer from non-trivial leakage inductance phenomena, which necessitate the need for affordable voltage snubber circuits to control the semiconductor switch peak drain-to-source voltages. Because of the price-sensitive nature of SMPS, the snubber circuits are conventionally limited to the cost-effective passive and power lossy resistor-capacitor-diode (RCD) configurations.